North Dakota ranked top of the list for bars per capita at an astounding one bar for every 1,621 North Dakotans.ShutterStock

People in North Dakota binge drink more than most Americans, so it should come as no suprise that the Roughrider State also tops the list for most bars per capita.

Narrowly beating their neighbor Montana, North Dakota has an astounding one bar for every 1,621 citizens.

New York, by comparison, is more than three times less boozie with only one bar for every 5,629 New Yorkers putting the state in 19th place, according to data collected by The Forum from the 2011 American Communicty Survey, from the US Census Bureau.

Among the explinations for North Dakota’s dominant position atop the boozing charts is the state’s “work hard, play hard” attitude, according to Pam Sagness, prevention administrator for the Mental Health and Substance Abuse division of the state’s health department.

“It didn’t get to be this way overnight,” Sagness said.

Besides having 422 bars for its 683,932 residents and the sixth-most liquor stores per capita (one per 1,937 residents), there are also two 2010 studies from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention that showed that North Dakotans binge drink more, and more often, than most other Americans.

“The joke was, you have to have as many bars as churches – if not more,” said Laura Milo, general manager at JL Beer in downton Fargo.

Another common explination is that mostly rural North Dakota lacks other entertainment options.

“There’s not much else to do here,” Jason Stein, Bar Manager of the Supper Club and Lounge in Davenport told ABC 6.

“It’s kind of a centerpiece. There really isn’t anything else to do in a town of like 200 people,” he said.

Bruce Schauer of the the Wild Rice Grill and Bar agrees, “In rural communities, the local bar and grill is really the only place you can go to eat, and the food sales are usually about the same as the liquor sales,” he said.

The lack of big cities might explain why North Dakota, while ranking tops in bars per capita as a state, does not have a single metro area in the top five for bars per capita. Instead, La Crosse, Wisconsin on the state’s border with Minnesota, takes top billing in that category while the rest of the top five booziest metro areas are all inside Wisconsin.